Style over Substance?Pride & Prejudice (2005) Proves Itself a Film for Our
Time

Catherine
Stewart-Beer

Catherine Stewart-Beer (email: garboventures@ntlworld.com)
is currently
researching her Ph.D., “Postmodern
Adaptation . . . Adapting Postmodernism: Case Studies Towards a Re-Theorising of Text-to-Screen Adaptation,” at Oxford
Brookes University. Prior to embarking on academic research, she was a
journalist and consultant, focusing on broadcasting, media and marketing.

Focus Features’s cinematic adaptation of Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice garnered
decidedly mixed critical reviews and audience responses when it was released in
Fall 2005. This version was purported to be glossier yet grittier than
former adaptations and was best-noted for the recruitment of rising star Keira
Knightley to play Austen’s much-loved heroine Elizabeth Bennet. But for
all the cinematic flashiness of the new film, former adaptations of Pride and Prejudice—in particular the
1995 BBC TV series—have retained a larger, loyal and more vocal fanbase,
raising the question: was the 2005 Pride
& Prejudice ultimately a case of style over substance?

The 2005 Pride
& Prejudice focuses primarily on Elizabeth Bennet’s own emotional
journey, her maturation plot, offering us a largely uncluttered narrative
centered on the heroine. Simply put, the film offers the tale of a young
girl on the cusp of womanhood who falls deeply in love, a theme with timeless
romantic appeal.It can be seen as a
refreshing feminine counterpoint to a tendency in much period adaptation to
ramp up the masculine viewpoint. Arguably, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, with its abundance of “extra” Darcy in
comparison to the novel, emphasized the masculine, as screenwriter Andrew
Davies often switched the focus away from Elizabeth to the hero. Davies even
inserted multiple invented scenes to afford the audience closer access to
Darcy’s perspective and inner life, thus ensuring that the audience was
sufficiently wooed by him as a viable, sympathetic romantic match.1 Notably, the 2005 Pride & Prejudice rarely strays
from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, and in comparison to Colin Firth’s Darcy in 1995,
Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy in 2005 has limited airtime.

Certainly, there is much to admire in the 2005
adaptation, most especially for those who like to revel in the aesthetic
pleasures of cinematic narrative. British director Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudicenever fails to be visually engaging. Photography
is lush and fluent, art design is impressive, and the musical score from Dario
Marianelli is enchanting. Cinematographically, narrative is moved along
at a brisk and efficient rate. Every frame is chock-full of ideas,
action, and momentum. Joe Wright also demonstrates a wonderful
choreographic talent for organizing space and people. The long tracking shots
he uses for two major dance sequences, in addition to the opening scenes at the
Bennets’ house, all comprise brilliant film-making, exhibiting a true mastery
of the art of telling a story utilizing visual cues. Wright’s skills
behind the camera exemplify the classic film school exhortation to “show” not
“tell.” Wright also deploys, to good effect, a wide range of filmic
devices, notably to enact transitions from one scene to another. For
example, Elizabeth circles slowly on a swing in the Bennets’ backyard, as the scenes
and the seasons change around her, moving us through time. There is a
constant flow, a fluidity, between images and moments in this film, ensuring a
visually satisfying experience even if these images sometimes border on
hyperbole.

Most
notable in this regard is a nonsensical but dramatically beautiful shot of Keira
Knightley’s Elizabeth standing alone on the edge of an extremely high and
vertiginous rock face in Derbyshire, overlooking a magnificent scenic feast
below her. It is a stunning, magical evocation of Wright’s strong
stylistic brand of Postmodern Romanticism, more resonant perhaps of Emily
Brontë’s Wuthering Heights than of
a work by Jane Austen, who parodied society’s attachment to the picturesque
and lampooned the cult of sensibility, most notably in Sense and Sensibility.

More
important, Wright’s instinctive preference for aesthetic beauty is perhaps
inconsistent with his own purported intention to render a more “Realist”
representation of Austen’s day. Indeed, he has said, “I
wanted to treat it [the adaptation] as a piece of British realism rather than
going with the picturesque tradition, which tends to depict an idealized
version of English heritage as some kind of heaven on Earth” (qtd. in
Walter). This intent
supposedly meant eschewing the long, loving establishment shots of bucolic
English countryside and stately homes, often noted in British period
drama. Yet Wright’s Pride &
Prejudice still manages to linger over Chatsworth, one of England’s finest
grand estates and the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, rendered in fulsome glory
as Darcy’s Pemberley. Notably Darcy’s annual income is just £10,000 a
year, in comparison to that of the Duke of Devonshire, who earned an estimated
annual £70,000 according to Chatsworth accounts for the years 1813-1815
(Cannadine 79). The choice of Chatsworth is thus a far cry from Realist
representation. Arguably, the primary aim was to offer a swift filmic metonymy
of Darcy’s wealth and position in comparison to the Bennet
house. Here, Longbourn is itself represented by stately Groombridge
Place—a very grand seventeenth century manor house surrounded by a moat, and
also a hugely popular tourist destination.

In Wright’s defense, the director never claims to shy
away from instant aesthetic appeal. “I always said I wanted it to be
beautiful, but not pretty,” says Wright. “One’s natural inclination as an
artist is to make things beautiful. I also wanted it to be provincial,
and I wanted them to have a laugh” (qtd. in Briscoe). His assertion isvery much in keeping
with the general tone of this production, which the screenwriter Deborah
Moggach has famously dubbed “the
muddy-hem version” of Pride and Prejudice
(qtd. in Briscoe, Walter).

Wright’s filming techniques support his drive for
“gritty” realism. His influences are rooted in British televisual contemporary social realism,
which brandishes a trademark “television docu-drama”
style. Wright’s Pride &
Prejudice borrows from this style: the camera plunges down corridors,
pulling the viewer into and out of rooms, keeping us close to the action.
Wright states: “If something is contemporary, people shoot it with zoom
lenses and handheld cameras, and if something is period, then they want to
shoot it with a static, formal composition. But, actually, zoom lenses
are incredibly exciting, because they mean you can move with the moment and
improvise. To shoot Pride and
Prejudice in a so-called contemporary style brings it into fresh relief”
(qtd. in Briscoe).

Certainly, the film is a rumbustious, wholesome
affair, a far cry from the often staid chocolate-box prettiness associated with
so much heritage costume drama on film. Therefore, even though Mr. Bennet is a
“gentleman” farmer, livestock crowds the decidedly unmanicured yard abutting
their lovely house, and the interiors are decidedly shambolic and
unfashionable. The film simply revels in its Hogarthian muddy
rusticity. And the provincial and comparatively
impecunious status of the Bennets is never shied away from. (Indeed,
Wright strongly highlights class distinction in this production, possibly, at
times, even overplaying his hand.) Costumes are realistically dour,
shabby and homemade—at one point we see Mrs. Bennet and her daughters dying clothes with beetroot
juice. Naturalistic, uncoiffured hairstyles and no makeup match the
loose, unfashionable dresses, although the less formal style is partly due to
the period in which this production is set, pre-Regency, during the late 1790s.2
(Notably Austen wrote “First Impressions,”
the forerunner to Pride and Prejudice,
between 1796 and 1797.) In addition, the Bennet girls’ potential poverty
in the event of Mr. Bennet’s death is explained with a few short, clear
statements interjected into general conversation and further highlighted by Mr.
Collins’s (invented) surprise that the estate can afford a cook.

Local society is decidedly provincial in tone.
The assembly at Meryton is recreated here as a true rustic hoe-down, a riot of
swirling movement and sweaty bodies, wigs askew, accompanied by jaunty, folksy
music—seemingly most un-Austenlike, or so we have been led to believe by the
rather strait-laced tradition of BBC costume drama. There is altogether
something quite refreshing and remarkably unstuffy in this particular take on
Austen’s society, and it is here we first meet Mr. Bingley, a rather
comedic-looking chap with a shock of bright red hair, his snooty sister, and of
course, a stern-faced Mr. Darcy, whose socially entrenched rigidity is all the
more pronounced as a looming, sullen presence overseeing the dancers.

The
Bennet family home might be chaotic, but in this version it is, at heart, a
happy home—much happier, and much less dysfunctional, than Austen’s original
version of Longbourn (pun surely intended). For one, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet
actually seem to like each other, even love each other, a characterization
which is a far cry from the source text. Mr. Bennet, played here by
Donald Sutherland with rheumy eyes and a quiet but knowing demeanor, is seen
tending lovingly to his plants, seeking respite from the clamor of girls in his
household. There is also an ambiguous edge to this Mr. Bennet, an
association with some unpromising imagery: stuffed birds, a dead
dragonfly. The production fails, however, to advance this suggestion with
anything remotely substantive. Mrs. Bennet is commonly viewed as shrill
and abrasive, a buffoonish harpy much loathed by Austen’s narrator, but here,
as portrayed by Brenda Blethyn, she has been rendered a more rounded, layered
character, who shows real love and concern
for her daughters’ futures. Her infamous vulgarity is unavoidably
apparent, but she has been softened for comical effect.

The rest of the Bennet family is also treated with
comparative kindness by Wright and Moggach. Kitty, for example, is still
silly and simpering but thoroughly harmless. Lydia remains flirtatious,
vulgar and brazen, but there is a distinct vulnerability to her character,
which is not as apparent in either Austen’s work or other adaptations.
This vulnerability is manifested when she returns home from London with her new
husband Wickham. She is smug, proud and clearly infatuated with her
handsome Wickham, but as she leaves the family home for the last time, there is
a sad faltering as she waves disconsolately from her departing carriage.
Wickham roughly pulls her down, a foreboding that this marriage will be
abusive—not surprising given this Wickham, who has the reptilian charm of a
handsome sociopath. This sort of detail is characteristic of Wright’s film,
a telling act almost out of eyeshot but there nevertheless.

The
emphasis on Elizabeth’s happy home life is somewhat undermined, however, by
Moggach and Wright’s decision to portray Elizabeth as increasingly aloof and
emotionally distant. At first, Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth is shown to be
blessed with supportive, intimate friends. She
shares a bed and her deepest feelings with her elder sister Jane, played with
luminous beauty and poise by Rosamund Pike, and also has no-nonsense Charlotte
Lucas (Claudie Blakley) on hand. Yet as the narrative progresses, Elizabeth
increasingly yearns to be alone. In contrast to the novel, as her own
emotional life becomes more troubled, Wright’s Elizabeth pulls away from Jane,
failing to confide her feelings—while Charlotte is forcibly removed, of course,
through her marriage to Mr. Collins. Why do Moggach and Wright emphasize
Elizabeth’s withdrawal? It is certainly an alternative approach to
Elizabeth’s character and actions, and it subtly undermines the stability of
the close, seemingly supportive relationships she enjoys in the early stages of
the film. Is her reticence in not sharing her feelings with others,
especially Jane, after rejecting Darcy’s first proposal, the product of guilt
for potentially condemning her family twice (bearing in mind also her rejection
of Mr. Collins) to a future life of penury? Or perhaps, as seems most
likely in view of the film’s overall tenor, she is being portrayed here as a
young girl, hovering uneasily on the brink of responsible womanhood, still
grappling with her emotional and sexual feelings and thus unable to express
herself fully. While in a written text interiority is much easier to
convey, such silence on weighty emotional matters is notably uncommon in film,
where characters are often forced to express their feelings and fears to an
outside party.

Elizabeth’s taciturn approach is
rendered all the more bewildering in view of her feisty, impassioned
confrontations with Darcy and her rebellious refusal to “perform” for Lady
Catherine at Rosings. Her innate disdain for such self-important
authority figures, while deserved, also betrays her youthfulness. There
lingers a sense of a solitary and deep yet childlike nature beneath her veneer
of pertly poised womanhood. In this aspect, she is far removed from
Austen’s original Elizabeth, who has a greater sense of grounded maturity, even
though both Elizabeths have an occasional inclination to fluster, fun and
giggles.

The youthfulness of Pride and Prejudice’s characters is underlined in this 2005
production; therefore, Knightley’s Elizabeth expresses a youthful
excitability—at least to start with—and, notably, she is the only Elizabeth in
filmic adaptation to share the same age as her fictional counterpart.
Knightley’s Elizabeth, however, is much less sedate than Austen’s heroine (even
if Austen’s is famed for favoring long walks) and a lot less matronly than
Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth in the 1995 BBC adaptation. Indeed, Knightley
has an air of contemporary tomboy about her—you wouldn’t be too surprised if
she was shown to be wearing a clunky pair of Doc Martens or Hunter Wellies
under her long skirts. She has also been dressed in natural, earthy
colors, emphasizing her contentment outdoors.

This Elizabeth has seemingly been sheltered, comfortable
and happy, but she is launched, rather reluctantly and unprepared, by the
arrival of strangers—the Bingleys, Darcy, Collins, and then Wickham—into a new
and difficult phase of her life. Life at Longbourn has become a little
claustrophobic, as
demonstrated by the numerous scenes showing Mrs. Bennet and her daughters
eavesdropping at doors. Yet for all of Mrs. Bennet’s anxious clucking
over an impecunious future, Elizabeth at the narrative’s outset manifests
minimal urgency to take on adult responsibilities, to fly the nest.

Perhaps then Knightley’s Elizabeth truly is an
Elizabeth for 2005—a time when young men and women are often forced, because of
a precipitously expensive housing market, to live with their parents and are
therefore rendered unable fully to take on the onerous responsibilities of
adulthood, suspended in a false state of prolonged childhood. Knightley’s
Elizabeth, along with her sisters, is notably excluded from major ongoing
“adult” discussions (hence the eavesdropping habit), perpetuating a sense of
infantilism. Elizabeth’s uncertain status as a young female, forever
hovering on the threshold, continues for much of the action in Wright’s film,
most notably at Pemberley, where she tentatively spies on Georgiana and her brother.
Interestingly, by the closing stages of the film, Elizabeth’s family has
resorted to eavesdropping on her (and her spat with Lady Catherine).
Adulthood, a world of personal responsibilities and secret burdens, has
arrived.

Knightley’s Elizabeth is thrust into
adulthood in this production predominantly by her relationship with
Darcy. Certainly she is chastened by Charlotte Lucas’s security-driven
self-sacrifice in marriage with a man Elizabeth describes here as “ridiculous,”
but it is her wanderings away from Longbourn which offer most scope for
maturation. In many ways, the same can be said for Austen’s text, but in
this compressed version the effects are more immediately obvious.
Elizabeth’s romance with Darcy, however, is not hailed here as a meeting of
minds, a chance for Elizabeth to find her intellectual equal. Instead,
and unsurprisingly perhaps for a visual-oriented, two-hour film, it is their
mutual sexual attraction that is most strongly emphasized by the
filmmakers. This emphasis is notably at the expense of many of the
super-charged verbal battles for which this literary couple is justly
famous. Sexuality is thus deployed here as a mainspring of narrative
action.

Arguably then, the 2005 Elizabeth’s
“maturation” is sparked by her simultaneous erotic awakening, as demonstrated
by her response to Darcy’s first touch of her hand as she leaves Netherfield
Hall, and later, when, after Darcy proposes, they almost kiss whilst
quarreling. Her evolving sexual response is further reinforced when
Elizabeth visits Pemberley. Here the moment when Austen’s Elizabeth gazes
at a portrait of Darcy (and possibly falls in love) is replaced by a sensual
scene set in a sculpture gallery. Elizabeth marvels at neoclassical
marble statues, the gallery ceiling festooned with plump naked cherubs and
scantily-clad ladies. She tearfully admires the smooth eroticism of the
statues’ naked forms and gazes at a sculpted bust of Darcy. She then
acknowledges for the first time, when asked by her Aunt Gardiner, that Darcy is
a handsome man.

It is not just Elizabeth’s sexual
attraction to Darcy, however, but her initial attraction to Wickham that, in
Wright’s film, triggers active catalytic change in Elizabeth’s narrative.
Even though Wickham’s role has been drastically scaled back in this adaptation,
his importance within the narrative has not suffered a similar fate.
Elizabeth’s relationship with Wickham fundamentally alters the dynamics of her
dealings with Darcy at crucial moments, possibly at the expense of other
aspects of their complex relationship as written by Austen. This impact
is first evident at the Netherfield Ball when Elizabeth baits Darcy with his
supposed ill-treatment of Wickham, but it is Darcy’s failed proposal which
offers the strongest example of Wickham’s ex
machina intervention in their relationship.

Darcy and Elizabeth’s confrontation, in
this film, comprises a trading of verbal blows, which include Darcy’s
intervention in Jane’s love affair with Bingley and his insulting manner of
proposal. Yet it is Elizabeth’s mention of Wickham which pushes this
argument, and their relationship, into new territory—a more sexualized
domain. At this point, Darcy, who as played by Matthew Macfadyen is a
tall, imposing figure of a man, literally muscles himself forward, occupying
the figurative “space”—Elizabeth’s sexual interest—which has been formerly
occupied by Wickham; at this point, most unlike the novel of course, Darcy and
Elizabeth almost kiss. Darcy’s jealous aggression thus sparks her incipient
sexual interest in him and ensures there is a perceptible gear-change in their
subsequent interactions. In such a way, youthful sexuality can be seen as
the key driver of this particular adapted romance.

But what then of
the man Elizabeth falls in love with? Macfadyen’s Darcy is certainly a
powerful physical presence, and, as with Colin Firth’s Darcy in 1995, his
interest in Elizabeth is very much driven by his sexual desire. His
physicality is underscored by his large frame, which is highlighted throughout,
the camera often encountering him mid-body or allowing his body to obscure
other characters in-shot. He often looks too big for the furniture, most
particularly at Netherfield where the frail, neoclassical chairs look too
insubstantial for his long, sturdy limbs. There is also a strong
symbolism attached to his hands (indeed, hands are a key motif which pervade
the film as a whole), which are often viewed in-shot and “reacting” on his
behalf to what is happening between him and Elizabeth. Darcy’s costume is
also altered in the course of the film, becoming less stiff-backed and formal
as the story progresses.

Macfadyen’s Darcy is much less the haughty patriarch
we find in both Austen’s novel and to an even greater extent in the famous
Firth characterization. This Darcy is portrayed as struggling with the
responsibilities of adulthood, and he needs to mature emotionally—clearly a
predominant theme in this production. His greatest crime here is not
“Pride” as Jane Austen (and Darcy himself) would have it. It is social
awkwardness, laced with mildly peevish aggression, rather than superior
rudeness. He must become more socially adept, and, true to the model of
most Austenian heroes, he must prove himself worthy of the heroine by “learning
to regulate . . . his emotions in accordance with the constraints
dictated by a [contemporary] public courtship” (Nixon 25). Matthew
Macfadyen claims in an interview featured on the Pride & Prejudice DVD that his more defeated Darcy is “a young man who is still grieving for his parents. He’s from an
ancient family and has this huge responsibility, but . . . he’s still
trying to work out who he is and how to be in the world. It’s not news to
him that he has a taciturn, awkward disposition—he just can’t help himself.”
Amazingly then, Darcy, one of literature’s super-patriarchs, has been rendered
a victim: a victim of his own rigidly snobbish upbringing, a victim of
his own good fortune, and a victim of his loneliness. Unlike Austen’s
livelier hero with his abrasive clever wit, Macfadyen’s Darcy is often struck
dumb with love, “bewitched . . . body and soul.”

Tanya Modleski highlights the way the standard
Harlequin romance—and Pride and Prejudice
is often viewed as a key generic progenitor—usually features a Super Male (the
hero, usually older than the heroine and frequently richer) and a Shadow Male
(the weaker rival), both vying for the heroine’s love. Importantly, there is
misunderstanding and separation of the central pairing before
reconciliation. The patriarchal romantic hero, however, is finally tamed
through love, thus losing his blunt masculinity, as the heroine finally
conquers his pride. Modleski views such romance as a revenge fantasy,
where women ultimately oppose patriarchy by reorganizing reality (45). Arguably Macfadyen’s interpretation of Darcy subtly
weakens this aspirational fantasy, in the sense that this Super Male Patriarch
needs much less “taming” than the original.

Of course marriage to Darcy
offers Elizabeth unmistakeable material advantage, as she earns the potential
for genuine self-empowerment, represented by the gradual unfolding of the
splendors and responsibilities pertaining to Pemberley, of which she is set to
become mistress. Wright’s film unsurprisingly revels in the visual splendors
of Pemberley. As with Austen’s original heroine, Wright’s Elizabeth, in
her married capacity, is set to become a wealthy woman of substance and
standing, contributing to the wider social good. Ultimately it is a
conservative fantasy, reinforcing rather than overtly challenging a social status quo—although Austen’s support for
the rise of the virtuous and principled middle-class interloper, as symbolized
best by Elizabeth, should not be ignored either. From the singular
perspective of a heroine’s capacity to work change and wield power within the
narrow parameters of Austen’s world, however, Elizabeth’s social elevation and
her commensurate romantic satisfaction are nothing short of astonishing.
Aspirational fantasy indeed.

And yet, Austen’s Elizabeth
Bennet remains one of literature’s best-loved heroines, not because she
achieves so much, but because she initially rejects the aspirational
fantasy. In refusing the highly eligible Darcy, she demonstrates heroic
courage, not caprice, representing a wholehearted rejection of the concept of
the marriage of convenience, even necessity—most especially in view of her
family’s uncertain future. Her bold self-determination ultimately secures
her an intellectually equal relationship, and it is this privileging of the
personal over the social, Austen’s charting the psychology of two young people
falling in love, which has ensured the novel’s enduring popularity.
Elizabeth and Darcy effectively learn each other’s language, learn to read each
other’s self-consciousness. Love becomes a painful but certain process of
mutual understandings.

The 2005 Pride & Prejudice focuses primarily on this painful yet tender
process of falling in love. Despite the vivid grandeur of Pemberley and
the thrashing storm that serves as a backdrop to Darcy’s first proposal, this
is a small-scale romance, notable for its subtle, unspoken intimacies. Despite its luxuriant aesthetic pleasures and
over-blown Romanticism, Wright’s adaptation actually has a stiller heart, a
more introspective, shyer presence compared to the lively and engaging dynamics
of its textual predecessor.

Indeed, this film is anxious, its lead characters
subtly expressive of a deep-set fear of moving beyond the securities of the
known (childhood, family, the home) to face the trials and responsibilities of
the wider world. Perhaps this anxiety is reflective of the times we live
in—undoubtedly a circumspect, uncertain era, when compared to the past
securities and smugness of the optimistic mid-1990s, when the BBC’s Elizabeth
Bennet was brimming with confidence and her Darcy was a world-weary, go-getting
alpha male, reminiscent of a highly successful, corporate CEO. But here,
Joe Wright’s Elizabeth and Darcy truly have become children of our age,
startled into maturation through the unbidden circumstance of their falling
irrevocably and hopelessly in love.

As a fresh and exciting response to Austen’s original
text, the 2005 adaptation offers, however, minimal interpretative edge; hence
it has excited a relatively scant, even tepid response from critical and
academic quarters. In truth, this text-to-screen adaptation is less
interested in the “text” as opposed to its greater focus on the “screen” than
most adaptations, which are often embroiled in a more intensive dialogue with
their literary predecessors. The 2005 Pride
& Prejudice is perhaps more notable for showcasing the qualities and
intensities of the cinematic experience over fresh readings of Austen’s
best-loved romance.

NOTES

1.Indeed, it could be argued
that the scriptwriter Andrew Davies has engineered with his 1995 Pride and Prejudice a classic case of
what Laura Mulvey
cites as “trans-sexual identification,” in which the female spectator elides
herself with the male hero, enacting repressed desire for aggression. In addition, the 1995 BBC production also
offers us a Bennet family which has been rendered dysfunctional predominantly
by a grotesquely immature, selfish mother figure, whilst Mr. Bennet is treated
with much greater indulgence by the adaptors. Elizabeth’s allegiance to
her father, representative of the familial masculine, is solidly validated in
the 1995 production—arguably ensuring a corresponding repudiation and
diminution of the feminine. The wit, cleverness and common decency associated
here with her father (and later too with Darcy) ensures a subtle elision of
these “positive” characteristics with the masculine. Therefore, despite
the external femininity and prettiness of Ehle’s Elizabeth, her archness of
expression, cool temperament and sharp, witty intelligence appear, in this
production, to be mostly resonant of masculine values. This subtle
endorsement of the masculine over the feminine is perhaps what defines Davies’s
adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and
distinguishes it from others. It should also be noted that Brenda
Blethyn’s version of Mrs. Bennet in Wright’s 2005 film was far less shrill and
indeed much more sympathetic a characterization than Alison Steadman’s 1995
version.

2.Wright
preferred the costumes of the late eighteenth century to the Empire dresses
associated with the Regency period.